Kemp resigns post; Abrams refuses to concede in Georgia governor race

Protesters gather at the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta as Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp speaks at a news conference.

Protesters gather at the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta as Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp speaks at a news conference.

Photo: Kevin D. Liles / New York Times

Photo: Kevin D. Liles / New York Times

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Protesters gather at the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta as Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp speaks at a news conference.

Protesters gather at the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta as Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp speaks at a news conference.

Photo: Kevin D. Liles / New York Times

Kemp resigns post; Abrams refuses to concede in Georgia governor race

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ATLANTA— Republican Brian Kemp resigned Thursday as Georgia’s secretary of state, a day after his campaign said he had captured enough votes to become governor. His Democratic rival, Stacey Abrams, refused to concede and her campaign demanded that state officials “count every single vote.”

As the state’s top election official, Kemp oversaw the race, a marquee contest in the nation’s midterms. His resignation Thursday morning came as a hearing began for a lawsuit in which five voters asked that he be barred from exercising his duties in any future management of his own election tally.

Abrams’ campaign had repeatedly accused Kemp of improperly using his post as secretary of state and had been calling for him to step down for months, saying his continuation in the job was a conflict of interest. Kemp made clear that he wasn’t stepping down in response to that criticism, but to start on his transition to the governor’s office.

His resignation took effect just before noon Thursday. He said an interim secretary of state had been appointed to oversee the rest of the vote count.

The Associated Press has not called the election.

Shortly after Kemp’s announcement, Abrams’ campaign and its legal team held a news conference to announce that they would not give up the fight to have all ballots counted. They insisted enough votes remained uncounted to affect the outcome of the election.

“This is all public information, ladies and gentlemen, public information,” said campaign manager Lauren Groh-Wargo. “We demand that Secretary of State Kemp, his campaign ... they need to release all the data, all the numbers, and they need to count every single vote.”

The lawyers said they planned to file a lawsuit against officials in Dougherty County, where they said absentee ballots were delayed because of Hurricane Michael, which devastated parts of south Georgia.

Also Thursday, Republican Rep. Karen Handel conceded her long-red House seat in the Atlanta suburbs to an African American gun control advocate making her first run for public office.

Handel said her careful review of the vote count shows she narrowly lost to Democrat Lucy McBath.

McBath won in the 6th district — the seat former House Speaker Newt Gingrich held when he led a GOP congressional takeover in mid-1990s — by campaigning as a “mother on a mission” to strengthen gun control laws.

Her 17-year-old son, Jordan Davis, was fatally shot at a Florida gas station in 2012 by a white man who was angry over the loud music the black teenager and his friends had been playing in their car. She later became a national spokeswoman for the group Everytown for Gun Safety.